t exception, the finest of any I had
seen on the Australian Continent. Their bodies were not disfigured by any
scars, neither were their countenances by the loss of any teeth, nor were
they circumcised. They were a well-made race, with a sufficiency of
muscular development, and stood as erect as it was possible to do,
without the unseemly protrusion of stomach, so common among the
generality of natives. Of sixty-nine who I counted round me at one time,
I do not think there was one under my own height, 5 feet 10 3/4 inches,
but there were several upwards of 6 feet. The children were also very
fine, and I thought healthier and better grown than most I had seen, but
I observed here, as elsewhere amongst smaller tribes, that the female
children were more numerous than the males, why such should be the case,
it is difficult to say. Whilst, however, I am thus praising the personal
appearance of the men, I am sorry to say I observed but little
improvement in the fairer sex. They were the same half-starved unhappy
looking creatures whose condition I have so often pitied elsewhere.

These were a merry people and seemed highly delighted at our visit, and
if one or two of them were a little forward, I laid it to the account of
curiosity and a feeling of confidence in their own numbers. But a little
thing checked them, nor did they venture to touch our persons, much less
to put their hands into our pockets, as the natives appear to have done,
in the case of another explorer. It is a liberty I never allowed any
native to take, not only because I did not like it, but because I am sure
it must have the effect of lowering the white man in the estimation of
the savage, and diminishing those feelings of awe and inferiority, which
are the European's best security against ill treatment. The natives told
us, that there was no water to the eastward, and that if we went there we
should all die. They explained that the creek commenced on the plains, by
spreading out their fingers as the old man had done, to shew that many
small channels made a large one, pointing to the creek, and they said the
water was all gone to the place we had come from; meaning, to the lower
part of it. On asking them by signs, if the creek continued beyond the
plains, they shook their heads, and again put their extended hand on the
ground, pointing to the plain. They could give us no account of the
ranges to which I proposed going, any more than others we had asked. On